finding the confidence and staying connected to your authentic Self

Exhaustion and fatigue

When you're doing the work to get back in connection with your true self inside, it can be exhausting! You may need to get some serious rest.

But this is all for a good cause. And you will feel more energy and less internal conflict once you do this work of gaining clarity and accepting who you are.

So get some rest. Nourish yourself with high quality food. Let some of your chores or errands go. Find something beautiful to look at or listen to. And relax a bit more into yourself.

A place where you belong

To be healthy, you must be authentic and honest with yourself.

That doesn't mean that there aren't places and situations where you engineer your behavior. There are always times and places where you hold back or act polite or try to impress. There is nothing wrong with that. This is common sense when you want to be successful in your life or work. And on any given day, you may move in and out of different situations or cultures from your family life to work or school to situations with friends to parties where you don't know anyone. In each place, the interactions and expectations may vary widely. And you may act different based on your surroundings and what you sense about other people.

But despite of all this navigation you do to move through different spaces in the world, you must at least have some time, in a place, where you can just be honest and open with yourself, surrounded by people you genuinely want to be with, spend time with or live with.

You must have some time of your own -- apart from responsibilities around work, family or other social activities. A place, with people, where you truly can be yourself. You need this for your long term health. Take care of yourself. And feed your soul this way. Everyone needs a place where they belong.

Having enough so you can live your life

How to move along this journey to peace, calm and confidence?

You must begin to confront the beliefs that say you were not meant to be you. The odds are that if you are feeling performance anxiety around your self-expression, then there is a belief at work inside of you that says you cannot be who you are. For whatever reason. What's your reason?

Is it that you can't make money being who you are? Is that no one wants to see the expression of who you are? Is it that there is something bad or shameful about who you really are? Would your parents not really want to see your truth? Are you afraid you'll lose something? Some idea of who you are to people?

These are basically beliefs of lack and not enough. Not enough LIFE here for you to really live. Not enough passion and life pulsing through your veins. Not enough oxygen to fill your self-expressive lungs or energy to move your vibrant voice up your throat and out your mouth. It seems like you have the life force you need inside of yourself. There is abundance inside of you. You are the embodiment of enough.

Do you really believe you have this life here, but you're not allowed to live it?

Can you disappoint another to be true to yourself?

The truth is that there are people in the world who live by their truth.

And that there are people who follow their inner voice. Who believe it is a legitimate way to live.

Do you struggle to know that you have an inner voice? And that it is your truth and guide? Your teacher on how to live?

Oriah Mountain Dreamer is one of those people who asks those confronting questions on living according to your heart and your soul, like here in her poem, The Invitation: 

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

...

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.

Finding your authenticity in each moment

Staying connected to your authentic self is a moment to moment experience. It is not something you do once and it's all done!!

Staying connected to your authentic self is like a yoga or meditation practice. It is something you do everyday. And each time you do it, you go a little deeper. And you catch a new layer that you hadn't seen before. You fall deeper into yourself. You expand your energy and who you know yourself to be.

In yoga and meditation, the breath is most important. Your breath is a tool for slowing down and coming into the moment. It is a tool you can use to sense what you know, to connect with what you are feeling.

This is connecting with your authenticity in a simple way. Your authenticity is like a living, breathing character, which has different moods and sensations. Yet it also has a consistent, patient, unwaivering tone which runs through your whole life.

I was listening to one of my favorite creativity and career coaches, Tama Kieves. She has a CD called Trusting Your Own Inner Voice. And it struck me how she refers to finding your inner voice as one of the most important things you can commit to doing in life.

Wow -- if they would only hand out grades on that in school!! Then you might really trust and know yourself.

So staying connected with your authentic self is something YOU must make important. Even if the world around you does not.

Knowing what you love

In order to stay connected to your authentic self, you must know what you love.

My friend and writing coach, Debora Seidman, sends out daily emails called Staying Connected to Your Writing. And last week she wrote something about: What do you love? Your body knows.

What does your body know you love? What vibrates as truth inside of you? Even if the people around you don't agree?

It also seems important for me to mention now that writing is a powerful, powerful way to connect with yourself. It is a way to focus in on what you really believe and want. It is a way to come to know what you feel on the inside. It is a priceless way to discover who you are and what you have to say. It is a tool for knowing yourself, for befriending your deepest desires.

Debora's daily emails on staying connected to your writing were my inspiration to start publishing short articles here everyday. If you would like daily support for your writing, you can find Debora here, at www.WritingThePrayer.com

Allow some of your progress to shine through

"Beauty is an internal light, a spiritual radiance," says Marianne Williamson.

In the words of Sarah Ban Breathnach, "It is absolutely impossible to commit to your spiritual growth, awaken to your own radiant Light and not have it reveal itself on the outside."

As you do things to grow yourself, to improve your inner self-image and to build your speaking and self-expression skills, automatically, your energy changes. Automatically, as a result of what you are doing, deeper layers of the beauty of your true being emerges.

Seek not only external results, but also rest and relax a little. And experience how more ease and delight can come without more effort.

Expressing and living your heart's desire

For you, developing the ability to express yourself is your calling.

It is part of your deepest purpose here on earth.

So you see, that what help/advice/training/support/healing you need, may not be about fixing yourself. It may not require figuring out what is wrong with you.

It is about feeling love and support directly to YOU from the forces of life itself, the very forces which animate all of us beings who live on the planet.

Ask yourself this question: Is life really set up to give you wishes in your heart, which you can never fulfill on? That would be a harsh reality indeed. I think you must believe that you have the desire in your heart BECAUSE you can live it in this lifetime. Or else it would be a tortured existence.

Yet really believing in this is easier said than done. It can be hard to truly, actively believe (as in have within you the experience of that truth -- live and moment to moment). To experience that you can express and live your heart's desire, your calling. It can be hard to really believe this when the stronger beliefs are at work and alive, moving around inside of you -- that there is not enough money or love, that there is something wrong with you, that you cannot handle the critical judgments of others, that who you really are should not be seen or heard.

What if part of your purpose was to express exactly those things which you think are so awful about yourself? What if those are the most sacred things about you and that's why they seem to need protection?

Finding ways to strengthen yourself here becomes important. Because you do want to be free to express these hidden, cherished things. You may need to build a strong, solid interior world in order to cultivate the courage to speak your truth.

Is that your strength or your problem?

Yesterday we started to talk about the idea of having innate strengths -- which occur to you as if they are problems.

It is hard to imagine how this could be so.

How could your innate strengths show up like problems?

But if you explore a bit into the topic of Highly Sensitive People, you will find what I am talking about. You will find vivid descriptions of how highly sensitive people get easily "overaroused" by the people and things around them.

Yet the deep sensitivity, which is a sensitive person's greatest gift (which needs to be understood and then cultivate and utilized), easily leads to an experience of being "overaroused", overwhelmed, over-stimulated or exhausted. And a person is then forced to withdraw from the situation that is overwhelming them.

In her book, The Highly Sensitive Person (where she introduces the concept of being overaroused), Elaine Aron, says about herself: "Here is the story of my only belly-dancing lesson. Learning any physical skill in a group is almost impossible for me because the over arousal from being watched wrecks my coordination. I soon fall behind the others and perform even worse."

Something you should not try to change in yourself

What I am wondering is:

Despite the longing you have for more self-confidence, despite the yearning you have for less anxiety and for more calm, do you ever notice something that's inside of you saying (and maybe it's only whispering to you and so you can only hear it when you get really quiet). It's saying: "Hey You, don't try to change me."

On this road through life, being a sensitive person, who can get easily overwhelmed by the world, yet who hungers for authenticity and self-expression, there maybe something inside of you that seems like a problem that needs to be fixed, but is actually NOT something you should try to change.

But that you need to listen to. That is part of your natural talent.

It can be very tricky to sense that you have this place inside of you, especially if you are not in the habit of connecting with it. It is tricky because if you have thought there was something wrong with how perceptive or sensitive you are, then you'll quickly miss it. Because you'll go into overwhelm. And try to avoid the rich, perceptive information flowing inside of you. And you'll experience anxiety.

Does this sound like something you can relate to?